Coconut oil was recommended by Pontus Granström on the Dual N-Back mailing list for boosting energy & mental clarity. It is fairly cheap (~$13 for 30 ounces) and tastes surprisingly good; it has a very bad reputation in some parts, but seems to be in the middle of a rehabilitation. Seth Robert’s Buttermind experiment found no mental benefits to coconut oil (and benefits to eating butter), but I wonder.
Vinh Ngo, a San Francisco family practice doctor who specializes in hormone therapy, has become familiar with piracetam and other nootropics through a changing patient base. His office is located in the heart of the city’s tech boom and he is increasingly sought out by young, male tech workers who tell him they are interested in cognitive enhancement.
You would have heard this advice from top achievers in any field, “Work Smarter, not Harder.” Then why not extend the same philosophy in all areas of your life? Are you smarting from a situation wherein no matter how much you exercise, eat healthy, and sleep well, you still find it a struggle to focus and motivate yourself? If yes, you need smart help that is not hard on you. Try ‘Smart Drugs’, that could help you come out of your situation, by speeding up your thought process, boosting your memory, and making you more creative and productive.
A fancier method of imputation would be multiple imputation using, for example, the R library mice (Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations) (guide), which will try to impute all missing values in a way which mimicks the internal structure of the data and provide several possible datasets to give us an idea of what the underlying data might have looked like, so we can see how our estimates improve with no missingness & how much of the estimate is now due to the imputation:

i chose to Omega 3 (GNLD) for my brain cells and coffee and tomato sauce as my antioxidants since they are cheap out here. organic fruits and veges are also cheap out here to fruits for 3$ can take me 7days! Its a matter of choice where you live but do exercise too! i have a selction of gym staff; dumb bells, a bench, skip rope for convenience within my room, work out 45min three times a week. I have developed great memory and processing speed and find the medicine/surgery course real fun

Evidence in support of the neuroprotective effects of flavonoids has increased significantly in recent years, although to date much of this evidence has emerged from animal rather than human studies. Nonetheless, with a view to making recommendations for future good practice, we review 15 existing human dietary intervention studies that have examined the effects of particular types of flavonoid on cognitive performance. The studies employed a total of 55 different cognitive tests covering a broad range of cognitive domains. Most studies incorporated at least one measure of executive function/working memory, with nine reporting significant improvements in performance as a function of flavonoid supplementation compared to a control group. However, some domains were overlooked completely (e.g. implicit memory, prospective memory), and for the most part there was little consistency in terms of the particular cognitive tests used making across study comparisons difficult. Furthermore, there was some confusion concerning what aspects of cognitive function particular tests were actually measuring. Overall, while initial results are encouraging, future studies need to pay careful attention when selecting cognitive measures, especially in terms of ensuring that tasks are actually sensitive enough to detect treatment effects.
Reason: More than 50 percent of your brain is comprised of DHA! Among a big group of elderly Americans, those with the highest blood levels of DHA were about half as apt to develop dementia and 39% as apt to develop Alzheimer’s as those with lower blood levels of DHA over a nine-year period. The top 25% of those with the highest blood DHA got about 180 mg DHA a day or three servings of fish a week, researchers said. In this study, the other major fatty acid in fish oil. EPA had no effect.
Not all drug users are searching for a chemical escape hatch. A newer and increasingly normalized drug culture is all about heightening one’s current relationship to reality—whether at work or school—by boosting the brain’s ability to think under stress, stay alert and productive for long hours, and keep track of large amounts of information. In the name of becoming sharper traders, medical interns, or coders, people are taking pills typically prescribed for conditions including ADHD, narcolepsy, and Alzheimer’s. Others down “stacks” of special “nootropic” supplements.
Caffeine, the mild stimulant found in coffee, improves mental acuity, though the drink's enthusiasts -- who guzzle 120,000 tons of the stuff each year -- likely already know that. Aside from caffeine's brain boosting effects, coffee's antioxidant richness helps maintain brain health. And some research suggests that drinking coffee can actually stave off depression in women.

2ml is supposed to translate to 24mg, which is a big dose. I do not believe any of the commercial patches go much past that. I asked Wedrifid, whose notes inspired my initial interest, and he was taking perhaps 2-4mg, and expressed astonishment that I might be taking 24mg. (2mg is in line with what I am told by another person - that 2mg was so much that they actually felt a little sick. On the other hand, in one study, the subjects could not reliably distinguish between 1mg and placebo25.) 24mg is particularly troubling in that I weigh ~68kg, and nicotine poisoning and the nicotine LD50 start, for me, at around 68mg of nicotine. (I reflected that the entire jar could be a useful murder weapon, although nicotine presumably would be caught in an autopsy’s toxicology screen; I later learned nicotine was an infamous weapon in the 1800s before any test was developed. It doesn’t seem used anymore, but there are still fatal accidents due to dissolved nicotine.) The upper end of the range, 10mg/kg or 680mg for me, is calculated based on experienced smokers. Something is wrong here - I can’t see why I would have nicotine tolerance comparable to a hardened smoker, inasmuch as my maximum prior exposure was second-hand smoke once in a blue moon. More likely is that either the syringe is misleading me or the seller NicVape sold me something more dilute than 12mg/ml. (I am sure that it’s not simply plain water; when I mix the drops with regular water, I can feel the propylene glycol burning as it goes down.) I would rather not accuse an established and apparently well-liked supplier of fraud, nor would I like to simply shrug and say I have a mysterious tolerance and must experiment with doses closer to the LD50, so the most likely problem is a problem with the syringe. The next day I altered the procedure to sucking up 8ml, squirting out enough fluid to move the meniscus down to 7ml, and then ejecting the rest back into the container. The result was another mild clean stimulation comparable to the previous 1ml days. The next step is to try a completely different measuring device, which doesn’t change either.

Of course learning, working memory and cognitive control represent just a few aspects of thinking. Farah concluded that studies looking at other kinds of cognition - verbal fluency, for instance - were too few and too contradictory to tell us much. Both Chatterjee and Farah have wondered whether drugs that heighten users' focus might dampen their creativity. After all, some of our best ideas come to us not when we sit down at a desk but rather when we're in the shower or walking the dog - letting our minds roam. Jimi Hendrix reported that the inspiration for "Purple Haze" came to him in a dream; the chemist Friedrich August Kekule claimed that he discovered the ring structure of benzene during a reverie in which he saw the image of a snake biting its tail. Farah told me: "There is some evidence that suggests that individuals who are better able to focus on one thing and filter out distractions tend to be less creative.
Choline is a nootropic: it enhances your ability to pay attention and learn efficiently,[18] probably because you use a lot of acetylcholine during mentally-demanding tasks, and choline helps you synthesize enough to work harder and go longer.[19] Choline also links to decreased brain inflammation in a dose-dependent manner — the more choline you eat, the less inflamed your brain tends to be.[20]
Clarke and Sokoloff (1998) remarked that although [a] common view equates concentrated mental effort with mental work…there appears to be no increased energy utilization by the brain during such processes (p. 664), and …the areas that participate in the processes of such reasoning represent too small a fraction of the brain for changes in their functional and metabolic activities to be reflected in the energy metabolism of the brain… (p. 675).
I have lots of problems with procrastination and productivity, most likely due to a mild case of ADHD, and recently it's been getting worse and worse. I was a bit hesitant to take Addium at first because I, like most people, had heard about it as a tool for students to use for cramming and it's results sound a little bit like the results of taking Adderall recreationally, which isn't my cup of tea. I was also hesitant to try it because it's marketing just makes it seem like it's a scam pill, and I unfortunately take quality of advertising rather seriously. I changed my mind (after another particularly trying week at work) after a friend of mine actually recommended it for me and told me that she was having great results from it. In my mind, I figured that if a real person,someone I know and trust, tells me in real life that I should maybe try it...then I may as well give it a shot. I ordered the Addium and as soon as I got it, I started taking it immediately. The Addium actually works. I can't believe it. It's helped a lot with my productivity at work. I'm taking just one tablet per day and it seems to be doing the trick. I think the best part about it is that it's not something that you have to continuously take every day.
Results: Women with high caffeine intakes had significantly higher rates of bone loss at the spine than did those with low intakes (−1.90 ± 0.97% compared with 1.19 ± 1.08%; P = 0.038). When the data were analyzed according to VDR genotype and caffeine intake, women with the tt genotype had significantly (P = 0.054) higher rates of bone loss at the spine (−8.14 ± 2.62%) than did women with the TT genotype (−0.34 ± 1.42%) when their caffeine intake was >300 mg/d…In 1994, Morrison et al (22) first reported an association between vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) polymorphism and BMD of the spine and hip in adults. After this initial report, the relation between VDR polymorphism and BMD, bone turnover, and bone loss has been extensively evaluated. The results of some studies support an association between VDR polymorphism and BMD (23-,25), whereas other studies showed no evidence for this association (26,27)…At baseline, no significant differences existed in serum parathyroid hormone, serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, serum osteocalcin, and urinary N-telopeptide between the low- and high-caffeine groups (Table 1⇑). In the longitudinal study, the percentage of change in serum parathyroid hormone concentrations was significantly lower in the high-caffeine group than in the low-caffeine group (Table 2⇑). However, no significant differences existed in the percentage of change in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D

Clinical psychiatrist Emily Deans has a private practice in Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard Medical School. She told me by phone that, in principle, there's "probably nothing dangerous" about the occasional course of nootropics for a hunting trip, finals week, or some big project. Beyond that, she suggests considering that it's possible to build up a tolerance to many neuroactive products if you use them often enough.

The evidence? Although everyone can benefit from dietary sources of essential fatty acids, supplementation is especially recommended for people with heart disease. A small study published in 2013 found that DHA may enhance memory and reaction time in healthy young adults. However, a more recent review suggested that there is not enough evidence of any effect from omega 3 supplementation in the general population.
Creatine is a substance that’s produced in the human body. It is initially produced in the kidneys, and the process is completed in the liver. It is then stored in the brain tissues and muscles, to support the energy demands of a human body. Athletes and bodybuilders take creatine supplements for relieving fatigue and increasing the recovery of the muscle tissues that are affected by vigorous physical activities. Apart from helping the tissues to recover faster, creatine also helps in enhancing the mental functions in sleep-deprived adults and it also improves the performance of difficult cognitive tasks.
By which I mean that simple potassium is probably the most positively mind altering supplement I’ve ever tried…About 15 minutes after consumption, it manifests as a kind of pressure in the head or temples or eyes, a clearing up of brain fog, increased focus, and the kind of energy that is not jittery but the kind that makes you feel like exercising would be the reasonable and prudent thing to do. I have done no tests, but feel smarter from this in a way that seems much stronger than piracetam or any of the conventional weak nootropics. It is not just me – I have been introducing this around my inner social circle and I’m at 7/10 people felt immediately noticeable effects. The 3 that didn’t notice much were vegetarians and less likely to have been deficient. Now that I’m not deficient, it is of course not noticeable as mind altering, but still serves to be energizing, particularly for sustained mental energy as the night goes on…Potassium chloride initially, but since bought some potassium gluconate pills… research indicates you don’t want to consume large amounts of chloride (just moderate amounts).
Recently I spoke on the phone with Barbara Sahakian, a clinical neuropsychologist at Cambridge University and the co-author of a 2007 article in Nature entitled "Professor's Little Helper". Sahakian, who also consults for several pharmaceutical companies, and her co-author, Sharon Morein-Zamir, reported that a number of their colleagues were using prescription drugs like Adderall and Provigil. Because the drugs are easy to buy online, they wrote, it would be difficult to stop their spread: "The drive for self-enhancement of cognition is likely to be as strong if not stronger than in the realms of 'enhancement' of beauty and sexual function." (In places like Cambridge, at least.)
Subjects with a history or presence of clinically important cardiac, renal, hepatic, endocrine (including diabetes mellitus), pulmonary, biliary, gastrointestinal, pancreatic, or neurologic disorders that, in the judgment of the Investigator, would interfere with the subject's ability to provide informed consent, comply with the study protocol (which might confound the interpretation of the study results), or put the subject at undue risk.
Microdosing With Psilocybin: Psilocybin, AKA “magic mushrooms”, are naturally occurring fungi, with over 180 different species and research from archaeologist evidence has shown that humans have been using psilocybin mushrooms for over 7,000 years. I’ve personally found microdoses of psilocybin, AKA “magic mushrooms”, to be best for nature immersions, hiking, journaling or self-discovery. Psilocybin primarily interacts with the serotonin receptors in the brain and has been used in therapeutic settings to treat disorders such as headaches, anxiety, depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorders (See additional studies here, here, here and here). There is limited data to show any adverse drug interactions with the use of psilocybin, and liver function, blood sugar, and hormonal regulation all appear to be unaffected during consumption (although it is best to avoid alcohol and any serotonin-based antidepressants while taking any psychedelics) (See studies here, here and here). A microdose of psilocybin is generally between 0.2 grams and .5 grams, and I’d highly recommend you start on the low end of the dosage range with these or any of the psychedelics mentioned here.
I noticed what may have been an effect on my dual n-back scores; the difference is not large (▃▆▃▃▂▂▂▂▄▅▂▄▂▃▅▃▄ vs ▃▄▂▂▃▅▂▂▄▁▄▃▅▂▃▂▄▂▁▇▃▂▂▄▄▃▃▂▃▂▂▂▃▄▄▃▆▄▄▂▃▄▃▁▂▂▂▃▂▄▂▁▁▂▄▁▃▂▄) and appears mostly in the averages - Toomim’s quick two-sample t-test gave p=0.23, although a another analysis gives p=0.138112. One issue with this before-after quasi-experiment is that one would expect my scores to slowly rise over time and hence a fish oil after would yield a score increase - the 3.2 point difference could be attributable to that, placebo effect, or random variation etc. But an accidentally noticed effect (d=0.28) is a promising start. An experiment may be worth doing given that fish oil does cost a fair bit each year: randomized blocks permitting an fish-oil-then-placebo comparison would take care of the first issue, and then blinding (olive oil capsules versus fish oil capsules?) would take care of the placebo worry.

More than once I have seen results indicating that high-IQ types benefit the least from random nootropics; nutritional deficits are the premier example, because high-IQ types almost by definition suffer from no major deficiencies like iodine. But a stimulant modafinil may be another such nootropic (see Cognitive effects of modafinil in student volunteers may depend on IQ, Randall et al 2005), which mentions:

50 pairs of active/placebos or 100 days. With 120 tablets and 4 tablets used up, that leaves me 58 doses. That might seem adequate except the paired t-test approximation is overly-optimistic, and I also expect the non-randomized non-blinded correlation is too high which means that is overly-optimistic as well. The power would be lower than I’d prefer. I decided to simply order another bottle of Solgar’s & double the sample size to be safe.

I took the first pill at 12:48 pm. 1:18, still nothing really - head is a little foggy if anything. later noticed a steady sort of mental energy lasting for hours (got a good deal of reading and programming done) until my midnight walk, when I still felt alert, and had trouble sleeping. (Zeo reported a ZQ of 100, but a full 18 minutes awake, 2 or 3 times the usual amount.)

Lucas Baker, a Switzerland-based software engineer with a large tech company, takes nootropics every day. He says it helps him maintain focus, especially on projects he might otherwise put off. “When I find an unpleasant task, I can just power through it,” he says. Baker also makes the coffee comparison: “There’s already a universally-embraced nootropic called caffeine,” he says. “It’s just about making it more widely researched.”

I have been taking these supplements for almost three weeks now. What I have noticed is there is a marked difference in the decrease of my daily brain fog. This was huge for me! However, I gave the product 4 stars because of my concern about the high count of vitamin B6. I think this should have been addressed in a disclaimer for concerned consumers
Cognizin– this is a derivative of citicoline. It increases* the levels of acetylcholine neurotransmitters, dopamine, and noradrenaline in the brain. These are neurotransmitters essential for brain functioning. Besides this, Cognizin maintains the functioning and stamina of neuronal cell membranes and enhance* energy production from the frontal cortex. With this, you will have increased mental reaction time, expanded focusing ability, improved* immediate and short-term verbal memory and augment the brain’s metabolism.
Vinpocetine: This chemical is a semi-synthetic derivative of an extract from periwinkle. It acts as a potent anti-inflammatory agent, and has also received some testing as a supplement for memory enhancement. While research results are inconclusive right now, this chemical has been shown to increase blood circulation and metabolism in the brain and may slow down neuron loss. Some tests have also shown that it can improve concentration and attention.
While the primary effect of the drug is massive muscle growth the psychological side effects actually improved his sanity by an absurd degree. He went from barely functional to highly productive. When one observes that the decision to not attempt to fulfill one’s CEV at a given moment is a bad decision it follows that all else being equal improved motivation is improved sanity.

Still, the scientific backing and ingredient sourcing of nootropics on the market varies widely, and even those based in some research won't necessarily immediately, always or ever translate to better grades or an ability to finally crank out that novel. Nor are supplements of any kind risk-free, says Jocelyn Kerl, a pharmacist in Madison, Wisconsin.

One thing to notice is that the default case matters a lot. This asymmetry is because you switch decisions in different possible worlds - when you would take Adderall but stop you’re in the world where Adderall doesn’t work, and when you wouldn’t take Adderall but do you’re in the world where Adderall does work (in the perfect information case, at least). One of the ways you can visualize this is that you don’t penalize tests for giving you true negative information, and you reward them for giving you true positive information. (This might be worth a post by itself, and is very Litany of Gendlin.)
Please take care when you’re out there on the web or in the world shopping for something to help that in progress novel or craft project of yours along. Take all care when planning on taking anything, be it a nootropic, smart drug, or brain enhancer, and do your research before buying. Make sure your so-called ‘best brain pill’ really is the best brain pill for you.
Safety Warning Do not exceed recommended dose. Not intended for pregnant or nursing mothers or children under the age of 18. Individuals taking blood thinners, any other medications, or have any known medical conditions should consult a physician before using any herbal supplements. Discontinue use and consult your doctor if any adverse reactions occur. Not intended to treat obesity; consult a physician before beginning any weight loss program. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. DO NOT USE IF SAFETY SEAL IS DAMAGED OR MISSING. KEEP BOTTLE CLOSED TIGHTLY AND STORE IN A COOL, DRY PLACE. Do not exceed recommended dose. Not intended for pregnant or nursing mothers or children under the age of 18. Individuals taking blood thinners, any other medications, or have any known medical conditions should consult a physician before using any herbal supplements. Discontinue use and consult your doctor if any adverse reactions occur. Not intended to medical conditions; consult a physician before beginning any weight loss program. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. DO NOT USE IF SAFETY SEAL IS DAMAGED OR MISSING. KEEP BOTTLE CLOSED TIGHTLY AND STORE IN A COOL, DRY PLACE. CAUTION: Do not exceed recommended dose. St. John’s Wort may contribute to photosensitivity resulting in skin irritation and redness in persons exposed to strong sunlight or tanning booths. Avoid use in patients at risk of bleeding, taking anticoagulants, or with clotting disorders, based on case reports of bleeding. Discontinue use 2-3 weeks prior to some surgical and dental procedures due to increased risk of bleeding. Avoid use in couples who are trying to conceive, based on theoretical reduction of fertility. Pregnant or nursing mothers, children under 18, individuals with history of seizure, taking MAO inhibiting drugs, or with a known medical condition should consult a physician before using this or any dietary supplement. This product is manufactured and packaged in a facility which may also process milk, soy, wheat, egg, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and crustacean shellfish. — This product is a dietary supplement. If you feel an adverse reaction, please contact our support staff immediately to notify us of the issue so that we can offer assistance. Please consult with a physician prior to beginning this supplement. This product has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Keep out of reach of children. Do not use if safety seal is damaged or missing. Store at a room temperature. Avoid in patients at risk of bleeding, taking anticoagulants, or with clotting disorders, based on case reports of bleeding. Discontinue use 2-3 weeks prior to some surgical and dental procedures due to increased risk of bleeding. Use cautiously in patients with history of seizure, based on reports of seizure due to Ginkgo seed ingestion. Not intended for children under 18 years of age. Avoid use in couples who are trying to conceive, based on theoretical reduction of fertility. Pregnant or nursing mothers, children under 18, individuals making MAO inhibiting Drugs, or with a known medical condition should consult a physician before using this or any dietary supplement.
(We already saw that too much iodine could poison both adults and children, and of course too little does not help much - iodine would seem to follow a U-curve like most supplements.) The listed doses at iherb.com often are ridiculously large: 10-50mg! These are doses that seems to actually be dangerous for long-term consumption, and I believe these are doses that are designed to completely suffocate the thyroid gland and prevent it from absorbing any more iodine - which is useful as a short-term radioactive fallout prophylactic, but quite useless from a supplementation standpoint. Fortunately, there are available doses at Fitzgerald 2012’s exact dose, which is roughly the daily RDA: 0.15mg. Even the contrarian materials seem to focus on a modest doubling or tripling of the existing RDA, so the range seems relatively narrow. I’m fairly confident I won’t overshoot if I go with 0.15-1mg, so let’s call this 90%.
Oxidative stress refers to a biochemical process that occurs as a result of an accumulative everyday exposure to toxic burdens such as chemicals in cosmetics, furniture, paints, cars, and pollution. Our body has its own way of armouring itself from the damage that exposure to toxins can create through its production of endogenous antioxidants, which is nature’s way of neutralising oxidative stress. Although we have our own production of these wonder molecules, when we are continuously overloaded with toxins in our environment and have problems detoxifying, the liver can become overwhelmed. Research shows that over time oxidative stress can lead to an increase in inflammatory molecules such as cytokines, which have been shown to correlate with depression (5).This is why it is important to have a high intake of nutrients that support the liver in metabolising and removing toxins from the body, as well as regulating the inflammatory response. There are a few things we can change in our diet to support this area, for example eating foods such as the cruciferous family of vegetables which includes kale, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage. These are particularly effective at supporting the liver in ushering out toxins as they all share an antioxidant compound called indole-3 Carbinol, which plays an important role in liver health (6). In addition, bitter greens such as collard greens, rocket, chicory and swiss chard are also great for supporting the liver’s own antioxidant defence system.

I always romecmend I always romecmend doing the best you can. Even acid rain or toxins in﻿ the air float onto the food I grow in my garden. I like to look at things as good, better, best. Its best to grow seaweed in a controlled enviorment (farming) and eat it. Of course for most﻿ people, in my opinion its far better to eat some seaweed to get some trace minerals than not. Im not saying eat them in MASS quantity but some here and there. Its best to grow your own food in TRACE MINERALS to get them. Was this answer helpful?

Either prescription or illegal, daily use of testosterone would not be cheap. On the other hand, if I am one of the people for whom testosterone works very well, it would be even more valuable than modafinil, in which case it is well worth even arduous experimenting. Since I am on the fence on whether it would help, this suggests the value of information is high.
She speaks from professional and personal experience. When she first moved to the United States from Italy at age 24 she was struck by how shifting from the Mediterranean-style diet she grew up on to a standard American diet negatively impacted her physical health and work performance. The experience led her to more closely study nutrition and the link between diet and brain health. In this excerpt from a longer interview, she discusses the brain foods you should be eating.
Avocados are almost as good as blueberries in promoting brain health, Dr. Pratt told WebMD.com. These buttery fruits are rich in monounsaturated fat, which contributes to healthy blood flow in the brain, according to Ann Kulze, MD, author of Dr. Ann’s 10-Step Diet: A Simple Plan for Permanent Weight Loss & Lifelong Vitality. This helps every organ in your body—particularly the brain and heart. Avocados also lower blood pressure, thanks to their potassium. Because high blood pressure can impair cognitive abilities, lower blood pressure helps to keep the brain in top form and reduce your risks for hypertension or a stroke. The fiber in avocados also reduces the risk of heart disease and bad cholesterol. These foods are good for your brain later in life.

The makeup of the brain is about 29% fat, most of which is located in myelin (which itself is 70–80% fat).[8] Specific fatty acid ratios will depend in part on the diet of the animal it is harvested from. The brain is also very high in cholesterol. For example, a single 140 g (5 oz) serving of "pork brains in milk gravy" can contain 3500 mg of cholesterol (1170% of the USRDA).[9]

Taurine (Examine.com) was another gamble on my part, based mostly on its inclusion in energy drinks. I didn’t do as much research as I should have: it came as a shock to me when I read in Wikipedia that taurine has been shown to prevent oxidative stress induced by exercise and was an antioxidant - oxidative stress is a key part of how exercise creates health benefits and antioxidants inhibit those benefits.

At this point, I discovered I had run out of magnesium pills and had forgotten to order the magnesium citrate powder I’d intended to. I still had a lot of Noopept pills for the concurrently running second Noopept self-experiment, but since I wanted to wrap up some other experiments with a big analysis at the end of the year, I decided to halt and resume in January 2014.
For example, a study published in the journal Psychopharmacology in 2000 found that ginkgo improved attention. A 2001 study in the journal Human Psychopharmacology suggested that it improves memory. Nevertheless, in a review of studies on ginkgo in healthy people, researchers found no good evidence that it improved mental abilities, according to a 2002 report in Psychopharmacology Bulletin.
Farah was one of several scholars who contributed to a recent article in Nature, "Towards Responsible Use of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs by the Healthy". The optimistic tone of the article suggested that some bioethicists are leaning towards endorsing neuroenhancement. "Like all new technologies, cognitive enhancement can be used well or poorly," the article declared. "We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function. In a world in which human workspans and lifespans are increasing, cognitive-enhancement tools - including the pharmacological - will be increasingly useful for improved quality of life and extended work productivity, as well as to stave off normal and pathological age-related cognitive declines. Safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both the individual and society." The BMA report offered a similarly upbeat observation: "Universal access to enhancing interventions would bring up the baseline level of cognitive ability, which is generally seen to be a good thing."
Qualia claims that its product stems from a new approach to science based on “principled meta-analysis and synthesis of existing research” to optimize “memory, focus, the speed of information processing, and pattern analysis.” The bottom line, however, is in its online medical disclaimer, which says: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. . . . No claims are made about the safety of this product, nor are any medical or psychological benefits claimed.”
It is incredibly easy to abuse and become addicted to methylphenidate, and misuse is shockingly prevalent, even among so-called “non-affected” users: with students, biohackers, soccer moms and busy executives popping it – and many of the other smart drugs below – like candy. It’s also not all it’s cracked up to be. Side effects include insomnia, stomach ache, headache and anorexia. Overdoses (which may occur easily as it can be difficult to estimate and regulate dosage) can lead to agitation, hallucinations, psychosis, lethargy, seizures, tachycardia (rapid heart rate), dysrhythmia (irregular heart rhythms), hypertension and hyperthermia. Methylphenidate is particularly hazardous to developing brains, especially those of younger students who are frequently prescribed the drug or who – often in high school and college – use it without a prescription. The prefrontal cortex, located behind the forehead, is responsible for cognition, personality-expression and decision-making, and develops well into the mid-20s, at which point it takes over as the “rational” part of the brain. In the central nervous system, and particularly in the prefrontal cortex, dopamine levels must have a natural rise and fall in order for healthy rational processes (executive control) to develop. By influencing dopamine levels, methylphenidate can negatively impact this healthy cognitive development, especially when it is abused or used too frequently.
A picture is worth a thousand words, particularly in this case where there seems to be temporal effects, different trends for the conditions, and general confusion. So, I drag up 2.5 years of MP data (for context), plot all the data, color by magnesium/non-magnesium, and fit different LOESS lines to each as a sort of smoothed average (since categorical data is hard to interpret as a bunch of dots), which yields:

My worry about the MP variable is that, plausible or not, it does seem relatively weak against manipulation; other variables I could look at, like arbtt window-tracking of how I spend my computer time, # or size of edits to my files, or spaced repetition performance, would be harder to manipulate. If it’s all due to MP, then if I remove the MP and LLLT variables, and summarize all the other variables with factor analysis into 2 or 3 variables, then I should see no increases in them when I put LLLT back in and look for a correlation between the factors & LLLT with a multivariate regression.

The third category was cognitive control - how effectively you can check yourself in circumstances where the most natural response is the wrong one. A classic test is the Stroop Task, in which people are shown the name of a colour (let's say orange) written in a different colour (let's say purple). They're asked to read the word (which is easy, because our habitual response to a word is to read it) or to name the ink colour (which is harder, because our first impulse is to say "orange"). These studies presented a more mixed picture, but overall they showed some benefit "for most normal healthy subjects" - especially for people who had inherently poorer cognitive control.
When we first created the BrainSmart Ultra™ range of natural smart drugs and brain supplements in 2007, our main aim was to deliver the most effective balanced natural smart nutrition supplements for the brain available. We wanted to formulate a range of brain health supporting supplements that not only delivered on its promise to help encourage an individual’s mental energy, concentration and memory but also one that contained, at its core, the perfect balance of neurological health supporting ingredients.
NeuroFuse was almost there with a top quality product but we felt that there were several key elements missing. It does contain a lot of the top natural ingredients for cognitive energy enhancement. However, the fact that their money-back guarantee is not apparent and that they are baiting customers in using a 14-day free trial offer, made us slightly wary. If they addressed these issues, we felt that this could have been a winner!
…Four subjects correctly stated when they received nicotine, five subjects were unsure, and the remaining two stated incorrectly which treatment they received on each occasion of testing. These numbers are sufficiently close to chance expectation that even the four subjects whose statements corresponded to the treatments received may have been guessing.

Upon examining the photographs, I noticed no difference in eye color, but it seems that my move had changed the ambient lighting in the morning and so there was a clear difference between the two sets of photographs! The before photographs had brighter lighting than the after photographs. Regardless, I decided to run a small survey on QuickSurveys/Toluna to confirm my diagnosis of no-change; the survey was 11 forced-choice pairs of photographs (before-after), with the instructions as follows:

The realm of natural nootropics is also accompanied by a family of synthetic nootropics called racetams, most notably piracetam and aniracetam. Piracetam is known to directly enhance learning, memory and attention and, with no observed adverse side effects, can restore cognitive performance in patients who have suffered cranial trauma, inflammation, strokes and ischemic complications following coronary bypass surgery. It can also improve symptoms of delirium and reduce depression and anxiety. In adults, the standard dose of piracetam ranges from 1,200 to 4,800 mg, often broken up into three smaller doses throughout the day. Aniracetam has been shown to concentration-dependently counteract cell death induced by excitotoxicity caused by glutamate, resulting in an overall neuroprotective effect. While you may not be shoveling mouthfuls of glutamate down your hatch or eating cartonsful of MSG-containing Chinese food each night, the same mechanism of action can help protect your brain from excitotoxicity or inflammation caused by other central nervous system irritants, such as toxins, chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, rancid oils, etc. Effective doses of aniracetam range from a single 400 mg dose to two doses per day between 500 and 750 mg, taken with meals.
Age discrimination is alive and well throughout the whole of the UK, a piece of legislation does nothing to ensure that people over the age of 50 get a fair crack of the whip when applying for employment, Employers dont need to give a reason for not employing a person over 50 all they need to say is that theyre unsuitable opr a more suitable candidate got the position, albeit they are usually younger!
Whole pill at 3 AM. I spend the entire morning and afternoon typing up a transcript of Earth in My Window. I tried taking a nap around 10 AM, but during the hour I was down, I had <5m of light sleep, the Zeo said. After I finished the transcript (~16,600 words with formatting), I was completely pooped and watched a bunch of Mobile Suit Gundam episodes, then I did Mnemosyne. The rest of the night was nothing to write home about either - some reading, movie watching, etc. Next time I will go back to split-doses and avoid typing up 110kB of text. On the positive side, this is the first trial I had available the average daily grade Mnemosyne 2.0 plugin. The daily averages all are 3-point-something (peaking at 3.89 and flooring at 3.59), so just graphing the past 2 weeks, the modafinil day, and recovery days: ▅█▅▆▄▆▄▃▅▄▁▄▄ ▁ ▂▄▄█. Not an impressive performance but there was a previous non-modafinil day just as bad, and I’m not too sure how important a metric this is; I must see whether future trials show similar underperformance. Nights: 11:29; 9:22; 8:25; 8:41.

…The Fate of Nicotine in the Body also describes Battelle’s animal work on nicotine absorption. Using C14-labeled nicotine in rabbits, the Battelle scientists compared gastric absorption with pulmonary absorption. Gastric absorption was slow, and first pass removal of nicotine by the liver (which transforms nicotine into inactive metabolites) was demonstrated following gastric administration, with consequently low systemic nicotine levels. In contrast, absorption from the lungs was rapid and led to widespread distribution. These results show that nicotine absorbed from the stomach is largely metabolized by the liver before it has a chance to get to the brain. That is why tobacco products have to be puffed, smoked or sucked on, or absorbed directly into the bloodstream (i.e., via a nicotine patch). A nicotine pill would not work because the nicotine would be inactivated before it reached the brain.

The brain’s preferred fuel is glucose, which comes most readily from carbs. Without ample glucose, you may struggle with brain fog and difficulty focusing. While you want to avoid refined carbs, whole grains contain fiber and help keep your blood sugar on an even keel. (Sharp rises and falls in blood sugar can impair your cells’ ability to uptake glucose because of insulin resistance, explains Malik.)
[…] 2. Blueberries: Also called “brainberries” by Dr. Steven Platt, MD author of Superfoods Rx: Fourteen Foods Proven to Change Your Life, blueberries have one of the highest antioxidant capacities of all fruits and vegetables and are known to improve memory and cognitive function. They have memory-protecting properties and have even been associated with the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Add some blueberries to your breakfast and you may not need to check that to-do list several times throughout the day. Also Read The 7 Best Brain Boosting Supplements […]

The research literature, while copious, is messy and varied: methodologies and devices vary substantially, sample sizes are tiny, the study designs vary from paper to paper, metrics are sometimes comically limited (one study measured speed of finishing a RAPM IQ test but not scores), blinding is rare and unclear how successful, etc. Relevant papers include Chung et al 2012, Rojas & Gonzalez-Lima 2013, & Gonzalez-Lima & Barrett 2014. Another Longecity user ran a self-experiment, with some design advice from me, where he performed a few cognitive tests over several periods of LLLT usage (the blocks turned out to be ABBA), using his father and towels to try to blind himself as to condition. I analyzed his data, and his scores did seem to improve, but his scores improved so much in the last part of the self-experiment I found myself dubious as to what was going on - possibly a failure of randomness given too few blocks and an temporal exogenous factor in the last quarter which was responsible for the improvement.

The benefit of sequential analysis here is being able to stop early, conserving pills, and letting me test another dosage: if I see another pattern of initial benefits followed by decline, I can then try cutting the dose by taking one pill every 3 days; or, if there is a benefit and no decline, then I can try tweaking the dose up a bit (maybe 3 days out of 5?). Since I don’t have a good idea what dose I want and the optimal dose seems like it could be valuable (and the wrong dose harmful!), I can’t afford to spend a lot of time on a single definitive experiment.
The original magnesium l-threonate caused me no apparent problems by the time I finished off the powder and usage correlated with better days, further supporting the hypothesis that magnesium helps it. But l-threonate would be difficult to cap (and hence blind self-experiment) and is ruinously expensive on a per-dose basis. So I looked around for alternatives for the followup; one of the most common compounds suggested was the citrate form because it is reasonably well-absorbed and causes fewer digestive problems, so I could just take that. Magnesium oxide is widely available it looks cheap, but the absorption/bioavailability problem makes it unattractive: at a 3:5 ratio, an estimate of 4% absorption, a ZMA formulation of an impressive-sounding 500mg would be 500 \times \frac{3}{5} \times 0.04 = 12mg or a small fraction of RDAs for male adults like 400mg elemental. (Calcium shouldn’t be a problem since I get 220mg of calcium from my multivitamin and I enjoy dairy products daily.)
The easiest way to use 2mg was to use half a gum; I tried not chewing it but just holding it in my cheek. The first night I tried, this seemed to work well for motivation; I knocked off a few long-standing to-do items. Subsequently, I began using it for writing, where it has been similarly useful. One difficult night, I wound up using the other half (for a total of 4mg over ~5 hours), and it worked but gave me a fairly mild headache and a faint sensation of nausea; these may have been due to forgetting to eat dinner, but this still indicates 3mg should probably be my personal ceiling until and unless tolerance to lower doses sets in.

Large scale studies have shown the association between chronic low-grade inflammation and depression (8). For example, in a study that examined data from 14,275 people who were interviewed between 2007 and 2012, they found that people who had depression had 46% higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammatory disease, in their blood samples (9). Studies like these are paving the way towards a new understanding of the pathology of mental health conditions and how diet and stress can alter bodily systems, such as digestive function and consequently impact mental wellbeing. Measuring IgG antibodies in food intolerance tests has been implicated as a popular strategy to tackle symptoms related to sensitivities such as IBS, joint pain, fatigue, migraines, anxiety and depression. A recent survey on 708 people commissioned by Allergy UK, demonstrated how 81% of those with elevated IgG levels, as well as psychological symptoms, reported an improvement in their condition after following a food-specific IgG elimination diet (9). Taking this all into account, health professionals and those with poor mental health may want to consider the potential role of food intolerances in mental well-being and in managing common mood-related disorders, such as depression and anxiety.

After informally testing various formulas of Qualia OS on themselves and friends, Collective founders did an unblinded pilot study with nine volunteers that Dr. Stickler says showed significant benefits in cognitive function and stress response in eight of the subjects. Still, he admits this isn’t airtight scientific proof that the product works. He says the Collective is hoping to do a placebo-controlled study, but in the meantime, he’s confident the stack works because of the results he’s seen in patients.

At the Brain Bio Centre, our nutritional therapy clinic, our therapists specialise in mental health and biochemical testing that can provide in-depth information about your own specific needs, so we can create a personalised plan to support your health. For more information, please visit our website: www.brainbiocentre.com. Alternatively, BANT (British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy), have a large network of therapists you can use to find a therapist suitable for you.
A Romanian psychologist and chemist named Corneliu Giurgea started using the word nootropic in the 1970s to refer to substances that improve brain function, but humans have always gravitated toward foods and chemicals that make us feel sharper, quicker, happier, and more content. Our brains use about 20 percent of our energy when our bodies are at rest (compared with 8 percent for apes), according to National Geographic, so our thinking ability is directly affected by the calories we’re taking in as well as by the nutrients in the foods we eat. Here are the nootropics we don’t even realize we’re using, and an expert take on how they work.

On the other hand, sometimes you’ll feel a great cognitive boost as soon as you take a pill. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. I find, for example, that modafinil makes you more of what you already are. That means if you are already kind of a dick and you take modafinil, you might act like a really big dick and regret it. It certainly happened to me! I like to think that I’ve done enough hacking of my brain that I’ve gotten over that programming… and that when I use nootropics they help me help people.

I have personally found that with respect to the NOOTROPIC effect(s) of all the RACETAMS, whilst I have experienced improvements in concentration and working capacity / productivity, I have never experienced a noticeable ongoing improvement in memory. COLURACETAM is the only RACETAM that I have taken wherein I noticed an improvement in MEMORY, both with regards to SHORT-TERM and MEDIUM-TERM MEMORY. To put matters into perspective, the memory improvement has been mild, yet still significant; whereas I have experienced no such improvement at all with the other RACETAMS.

We already knew that rosemary oil has a variety of benefits, but did you know that the herb does, too? Carnosic acid, one of the main ingredients in rosemary, helps protect the brain from neurodegeneration. It does this by protecting the brain against chemical free radicals, which are linked to neurodegeneration, Alzheimer’s, strokes and normal aging in the brain. (10)

I’m wary of others, though. The trouble with using a blanket term like “nootropics” is that you lump all kinds of substances in together. Technically, you could argue that caffeine and cocaine are both nootropics, but they’re hardly equal. With so many ways to enhance your brain function, many of which have significant risks, it’s most valuable to look at nootropics on a case-by-case basis. Here’s a list of 13 nootropics, along with my thoughts on each.

The benefit of sequential analysis here is being able to stop early, conserving pills, and letting me test another dosage: if I see another pattern of initial benefits followed by decline, I can then try cutting the dose by taking one pill every 3 days; or, if there is a benefit and no decline, then I can try tweaking the dose up a bit (maybe 3 days out of 5?). Since I don’t have a good idea what dose I want and the optimal dose seems like it could be valuable (and the wrong dose harmful!), I can’t afford to spend a lot of time on a single definitive experiment.
It’s also loaded with vitamin C — in fact, just one cup provides you with 150 percent of your recommended daily intake. Its high-fiber levels mean that you’ll feel full quickly, too. If you’ve only chowed down on overcooked, tasteless broccoli, you’ll love my Crockpot Beef and Broccoli, Creamy Broccoli Soup and Broccoli Pesto Dip — they’ll turn you into a broccoli lover fast!
I've started taking the addium in conjunction with another supplement that I'm using for focus NootropX - 90 caps - Mental Focus and Concentration Supplement With Memory Enhancement For Extreme Clarity and Alertness - Instant Brain and Memory Power Boost From Patented AES® Absorption System - The Ultimate Brain Vitamins and the combination of the two is really changing my whole life. With the nootropx I'm able to really focus on a task and completed, and the addium gives me the motivation to work, and work alot. My productivity at work has increased so much, and it's really amazing. I cannot believe it. I recommend both of these products, they will definitely change the way that you attempt projects.
Using the 21mg patches, I cut them into quarters. What I would do is I would cut out 1 quarter, and then seal the two edges with scotch tape, and put the Pac-Man back into its sleeve. Then the next time I would cut another quarter, seal the new edge, and so on. I thought that 5.25mg might be too much since I initially found 4mg gum to be too much, but it’s delivered over a long time and it wound up feeling much more like 1mg gum used regularly. I don’t know if the tape worked, but I did not notice any loss of potency. I didn’t like them as much as the gum because I would sometimes forget to take off a patch at the end of the day and it would interfere with sleep, and because the onset is much slower and I find I need stimulants more for getting started than for ongoing stimulation so it is better to have gum which can be taken precisely when needed and start acting quickly. (One case where the patches were definitely better than the gum was long car trips where slow onset is fine, since you’re most alert at the start.) When I finally ran out of patches in June 2016 (using them sparingly), I ordered gum instead.
Certain B vitamins - B6, B12 and folic acid - are known to reduce levels of a compound called homocysteine in the blood. Elevated levels of homocysteine are associated with increased risk of stroke, cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. A study of a group of elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment found that after two years of intervention with high doses of B6, B12 and folic acid there was significantly less brain shrinkage compared to a subset given placebo treatment. Opt for B-rich foods like eggs, chicken, fish and leafy greens.
To our partners, community supporters, and funders: The Brainfood journey has taken us many places, and at each fork in the road we discovered an amazing network of youth advocates ready to help lift our work to the next level. Whether you donated pro-bono consulting hours, connected us to allies in the city, or came in to meet our students and see a class, you helped us build something really special. Thanks for believing in us.
A picture is worth a thousand words, particularly in this case where there seems to be temporal effects, different trends for the conditions, and general confusion. So, I drag up 2.5 years of MP data (for context), plot all the data, color by magnesium/non-magnesium, and fit different LOESS lines to each as a sort of smoothed average (since categorical data is hard to interpret as a bunch of dots), which yields:
This tendency is exacerbated by general inefficiencies in the nootropics market - they are manufactured for vastly less than they sell for, although the margins aren’t as high as they are in other supplement markets, and not nearly as comical as illegal recreational drugs. (Global Price Fixing: Our Customers are the Enemy (Connor 2001) briefly covers the vitamin cartel that operated for most of the 20th century, forcing food-grade vitamins prices up to well over 100x the manufacturing cost.) For example, the notorious Timothy Ferriss (of The Four-hour Work Week) advises imitators to find a niche market with very high margins which they can insert themselves into as middlemen and reap the profits; one of his first businesses specialized in… nootropics & bodybuilding. Or, when Smart Powders - usually one of the cheapest suppliers - was dumping its piracetam in a fire sale of half-off after the FDA warning, its owner mentioned on forums that the piracetam was still profitable (and that he didn’t really care because selling to bodybuilders was so lucrative); this was because while SP was selling 2kg of piracetam for ~$90, Chinese suppliers were offering piracetam on AliBaba for $30 a kilogram or a third of that in bulk. (Of course, you need to order in quantities like 30kg - this is more or less the only problem the middlemen retailers solve.) It goes without saying that premixed pills or products are even more expensive than the powders.
TianChi Chinese Adaptogenic Herb Complex: The list of herbs and ingredients in the supplement TianChi is far too long to include here, but in short, it contains nearly every natural Chinese adaptogen and natural nootropic you’ve read about so far in this article. So when it comes to a purely non-synthetic approach to mental enhancement, this blend tops the totem pole. All of the herbs in TianChi are wildcrafted (gathering of plants from their native “wild” environment) or organic, non-GMO, Kosher Certified, non-irradiated and pesticide free, then formulated in small batches by a Chinese herbal medicine practitioner in Oregon. The herbs are extracted in purified water and test free of heavy metals. Most adaptogens purchased in today’s market are standardized 5:1 extract; meaning that it takes five pounds of herb to make one pound of extract. This is not always effective as some herbs may have to extract out at 10:1 in order to gain their natural strength. In contrast, the adaptogens in TianChi are extracted at a 45:1 ratio, making this one of the more potent blends out there. Strangely enough, I’ve found the brain-boosting effects of TianChi to be even more enhanced when consumed with beet juice or beet powder, probably due to the vasodilation effect of the beets. This is one of my favorite blends to mix up on a mid-morning or mid-afternoon an empty stomach for a very clear-headed cognitive high.
“In this fascinating investigation, Lisa Mosconi presents research that crosses disciplines to argue that what goes on in your brain—from your mood to your cognitive abilities—is very closely tied to what you put on your plate. In addition to being a compelling read, readers will find tips and outlines on ways they can change their diets for optimal brain health.”

We did note a significant warning with this product, namely that the caffeine it contains may cause a negative impact, mainly that some users may experience the jitters. Their dosage suggests that one can take up to 6 pills a day, which we felt was too many. These issues made us a little wary of the product, even though they seem to know the right ingredients to include.
When you start taking legit nootropics, you get to leave all of that behind you. You may never achieve perfect concentration (most of us never will), but you should find you are able to concentrate on the task at hand for much longer than you do now. You will end up taking fewer breaks, and you might start finishing up your work on time each day again—or even early!
According to Dr. Lisa, "neuro-nutrition is how our internal work translates to the external, for instance how we perform, behave, and use our strength, as opposed to 'dieting' which has an external (aesthetic) goal." An important portion of her research and theories on this matter root from her Mediterranean upbringing. She recalls immediately noticing how drastically different was the Western's culture in regards to food upon her arrival to the U.S. Interestingly enough, a recent study published in the British Medical Journal showed just how stark the difference between these lifestyles are and concluded that the Western lifestyle usually leads to "accelerated aging and increased risk of future dementia."
I posted a link to the survey on my Google+ account, and inserted the link at the top of all gwern.net pages; 51 people completed all 11 binary choices (most of them coming from North America & Europe), which seems adequate since the 11 questions are all asking the same question, and 561 responses to one question is quite a few. A few different statistical tests seem applicable: a chi-squared test whether there’s a difference between all the answers, a two-sample test on the averages, and most meaningfully, summing up the responses as a single pair of numbers and doing a binomial test:
"In an era of confusion about what we should eat, Brain Food is a shining light. This is the straight story about 'neuro-nutrition' firmly rooted in research by a neuroscientist who has a deep understanding of how food affects our cognitive health. Dr. Mosconi gives us advice we can easily implement into our lives and a story about the science behind it that is both delightful and accessible. A must read!"
Talk to your doctor, too, before diving in "to ensure that they do not conflict with current meds or cause a detrimental effect," Hohler says. You also want to consider what you already know about your health and body – if you have anxiety or are already sensitive to caffeine, for example, you may find that some of the supplements work a little too well and just enhance anxiety or make it difficult to sleep, Barbour says. Finances matter, too, of course: The retail price for Qualia Mind is $139 for 22 seven-capsule "servings"; the suggestion is to take one serving a day, five days a week. The retail price for Alpha Brain is $79.95 for 90 capsules; adults are advised to take two a day.